Odd And Interesting

It looks like Apple’s new iPhone 5 will be on the market in September or October 2012. From the rumors we’ve heard, it’s packing some big changes as well as improvements. iLounge’s Jeremy Horowitz has published a couple of pictures of what the new iPhone might look like. They’re a great comparison between the new and the old.

I have observed the following 3 signs of an impending iPhone 5 market release:

It seems that the black iPhone 4 stocks are low... similar to what we saw a few months ago with the diminishing white iPhone 4 stock levels. Rumor has it that Apple has instructed dealers to provide customers with comparable iPhone 4S replacements. Just like how the launch of the iPhone 4S meant the end of the iPhone 3G, the launch of an iPhone 5 would mean the end of the iPhone 4 and a price markdown for the iPhone 4S.

Apple moves to acquire 'iPhone 5' domain name: While iPhone 5 rumours have been circulating since November last year, Apple has now decided to file a claim with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in order to get the domain iPhone 5.com. The complaint (Case number: D2012-0951) popped up on WIPO’s website just this week.

Service providers along with other vendors such as Tiger Direct and best Buy slashes price of iPhone 4S & 4: Target is now discounting new iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S by $50 with a two-year contract. This brings the new prices in-store for the iPhone 4 8GB to $50 and the 4S 16GB to $150 (both AT&T and Verizon).

Please share other signs you think possibly hint to an impending iPhone 5 announcement in the comment section below.

View the following video for complete rumours on iPhone 5 specs and release date

The launch of the iPhone 5 will also drive lucrative after market accessories sales, where, brands like Incipio, Griffin, iLuv, who are all vying to be first to market with new cell phone accessories specially designed for the new iPhone 5.

While brands like iSkin and Incase continue to perfect their accessories which traditionally results in a typical 2-4 week delivery after the iPhone 5 is launched.

One thing remains sure... only those online accessory re-sellers, like Pure Mobile which has established strong strategic alliances with key accessory brand manufacturers will be best positioned to be first-to-market and provide consumers with the latest iPhone 5 accessories.

The word on the street it that the new iPhone will have a 4-inch display, and it will be taller and thinner than the current iPhone 4S. It looks like the back side of the case will have a metal pane. It doesn’t look like it will cover the entire back of the phone, so this might not be the final word.

To make room for its thinner case, the new iPhone will have a new design for its dock connector. Third-party accessory manufacturers will be all over that change. If Apple is going in the direction of a smaller and thinner dock connector, they might be on a mission to making the iPhone incredibly thin.

With this new design, Apple still needs to do something with the 3.5 mm headset jack. Maybe they’re planning to eliminate it and go with Bluetooth and AirPlay streaming features.

The rumor that Open Street Map will be replacing Google Maps as Apple’s default mapping application looks inevitable. Given the symbiotic relationship that Google and Apple have enjoyed for so long, you can’t help but speculate about what this means to the future of Google’s spirit of cooperation on the app front.

Google has always been willing to develop Apple-friendly app versions of their products, but now Apple appears to be invading Google territory with Open Street Map.

It looks like Google has a couple of ways to respond. They can take their apps and go home, or show Apple they ain’t seen nothing yet for iOS. Of course, as a third option, Google could keep letting Apple decide where their apps are welcome and where they are not. That just doesn’t sound like Google.

Here is some speculation (with a heavy dose of opinion) about how Google might be able to create a little independence from Apple and give Apple users Google alternatives.

Google Maps

Google might want to take this opportunity to develop its own third-party iOS-compatible map application. It would give them complete control over how their product is used and what goes into the iOS version. Google’s balancing act would be to provide a map app that Apple users want to use more than their parent’s version, and be just short of what they’d get with Android so they’d consider making the switch. Of course, Google has to walk the thin line of keeping Android users at home, too.

The opinion around here is that Google should show up Apple. Google would have more control over their maps app on the iOS platform, and not lose advertising dollars. Google should give its Android users an app that has better navigation than anything Apple’s loyalists can expect. Android losing users to iOS has been the trend for too long. It’s time to show Apple how good they really are at maps.

Google Drive

Google Drive is a strong competitor for Apple’s iCloud and Dropbox combo, but all Google seems to have done is rename Google Docs as Google Drive. Regardless of its name, if Apple wanted to create some competition for Google Drive, they’d have to at least marry iCloud and iWork.

Google has an iOS version of Drive in the works. Again, the challenge is how to design the app to entice Apple users to use it, and get some of them to switch to Android because of what they can only get with Android. It would come down to Google being able build a better Drive, something we haven’t heard is on the agenda right now.

There’s another twist to Google’s dilemma. Unlike Maps, Drive has a lot of competition. Although Drive is a nice all-in-one package, other apps have features that Drive doesn’t. Google has to give Apple users the full-featured Drive; otherwise they already have other places to go.

Google Music

There is nothing else out there like Google Music. Upload your entire music collection right from iTunes, and access it from anywhere you can get on the Web – your phone, your tablet, your computer, or someone else’s computer. Really it’s more of a question of where you can’t access it.

Now that we’ve established that Google’s product outshines anything Apple offers, would it be worthwhile to Google to design an iOS version?

Consider first what being a Google Play user means. When you want to buy new music, you press the Google Play button in Google Music and go right to the Google Play Store. While you can upload the music you purchase on iTunes to your Google Music account, Apple isn’t going to make it easy to buy anything from the Google Play Store. There’s no referral money in it for them, and they’d lose their own iTunes sales.

If Google were to release a Google Music app for iOS, instead of buying their music in iTunes and transferring it, Apple users would buy their music from Google via the Web. Besides, while Apple charges a subscription fee for iTunes Match, it’s free to sync your music to you Google Music account. There’s no reason to make the extra effort to buy music on iTunes, and only to transfer it to Google Music.

There is the loss of ad money to consider if they create a Google Music client on iOS, but we’re sure Google is taking a hard look at its options on this one.

Google Chrome

There is really no competition out there for Google Chrome. It’s the best browser choice on any platform. Other competitors have tried to topple Google, but no one has come close. When you want to do a search, you “google it”, you don’t “bing it” or “yahoo it.” Does Apple (or anyone else for that matter) have any hope of competing with Google on the browser front?

Google has been cranking up their investment in Chrome. What Google created on the Web, they’ve duplicated for mobile with Chrome for Android. Now, with their minimalist approach to operating system design, Google has got Microsoft looking over its shoulder with Chrome OS for devices like tablets and netbooks.

Google defined “search engine”, and it’s doing that very successfully for other platforms. There just doesn’t seem to be any reason for Google to share it with Apple and iOS.

Google could consider going after Safari Mobile with a Chrome iOS that is as full-featured as the Android version. There’s an inherent problem with making this effort though. With Android you can set Chrome OS as the default browser. Everything you do with the web will be done through Chrome if you want it that way. With iOS, Safari would be the default and the user would have to make the manual switch to Chrome with each search.

Again, Google knows its stuff when it comes to this product. Google is probably already in the game on this one.

Final words

We’re probably not telling Google anything they don’t already know. They have had a good thing going with Apple for awhile now, but the app game is changing very quickly. Hardware and software keep out-doing one another, so there is plenty of room for new directions. One of those might be making a bigger effort at crossing platforms with some of Google’s mainstays like Maps, Music, Drive and Chrome. They are all well-designed products, and a couple of them have no serious competition.

Intel’s first Android cell phone, the Orange San Diego (once known as the Santa Clara), performed quite well for a debut device from a first-time smartphone manufacturer. Packed with a (1024 x 600) 4-inch LCD, 8-megapixel camera with flash, micro-HDMI port and 1GB of RAM, the San Diego appears to be a solid, mid-range Android device. During its pre-launch, Intel didn’t over-promise on the San Diego, but focused on a few priorities: good web browsing performance, a high-quality camera and maximum battery life.

Watch the following insightful video on the Intel smartphone

Hardware:

The Orange San Diego’s look like a smartphone should. The cell phone case is durable but is a pretty ordinary design. Its black body is ringed by a silver border. There’s nothing special about the finish or any of the other body parts. The soft-touch backing is a nice feature for such an inexpensive phone, but it will still need the protection of a skin or a case to keep it blemish-free.

Along the right side of the 10mm edge are the volume rocker, micro-SIM slot and two-stage camera button. The micro-USB port is at the bottom. The mini-HMDI output is along the left side. All of the buttons are responsive. The camera button even quick launches the camera.

The Orange San Diego resembles a Samsung Galaxy S2 or an iPhone 3GS, but the prominent bezel below the screen gets in the way of it being as user-friendly as those two devices.

That the San Diego has a 4-inch screen is a nice surprise. While there’s no Super AMOLED Plus or Super LCD 2, the contrast is sharp and the colors are rich, although there is a little discoloration on the edges. The 1024 x 600 is screen is ample. When turned up to full brightness the screen was almost readable in full daylight.

There’s almost 11GB of storage space, but no expansion slot. The whole phone is sealed, so the battery is not removable, so a quick reset by removing the battery is not a possibility.

The camera can be controlled by the physical button or the touchscreen. The rear-facing camera can record 1080p video. The four capacitive buttons can be read in daylight. They also illuminate if lighting is too low.

Camera:

This is probably the biggest disappointment. While the camera is an 8-megapixel / 1.3-megapixel camera duo, you can’t judge this phone’s performance by its specs. Those 8-megapixels don’t live up to their reputation with this phone. While it is capable of burst capture, images are blurry and colors are washed out. Overall, photos appear dull and images aren’t very detailed. Color reproduction indoors was no better. Problems seem to improve a bit when operating in macro mode.

You’ve got a lot of camera control options including capturing multiple photos at differing exposures. The camera doesn’t have an HDR mode, but you can download your images, and turn them into HDR on separate hardware. The camera does have several auto exposure modes (including aperture and shutter priority), shutter-speed adjustment, anti-banding options, RAW mode, ISO settings (800 maximum) and a burst-mode capable of 15 frames per second for up to 10 shots, but you might not have much use for them given the overall mediocre performance of the camera.

Video produced the same ho-hum results. White balancing helped with fuzziness, but also washed-out whites. Autofocus performed well but slowly.

Software:

The San Diego’s OS is Android Gingerbread. The phone should be Android 4.0-capable, and that will be available later this year. It's hard to tell what was customized in the Orange San Diego’s OS. There are gesture features that could be useful. Drawing a symbol with your finger across the home screen or with any app acts as a shortcut that will take you to your pre-identified location. You can assign up to 27 shortcuts to apps, contacts, playlists and even Foursquare places.

Popular apps like Orange Wednesday come pre-installed but so do less-useful apps like the Orange Assistant, a redundant user guide and an NFC tags app. The presence of the NFC app doesn’t make much sense. The phone is NFC-capable, but it doesn’t come with taggable cards, and it’s not connected to Orange's existing payment service.

The display keyboard is one of the most responsive of any Android device, regardless of price. Swype is offered as an option as well. The web browser performs comparably to other dual-core Android devices. Even dense websites download easily and with little stutter.

Most apps were compatible with the new chipset, and only two didn’t work out of many tested.

Call quality was sharp and clear. Orange provides HD voice calling between the San Diego and other HD devices. The San Diego’s earSmart voice-cancellation processing is found in higher-end phones like the Galaxy S3.

Performance and Battery Life:

These are the two most important indicators of a viable future for Intel in the smartphone market.

The San Diego’s processor can’t come near a quad-core or Snapdragon S4s, but its single-core 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z2460 performs like a dual-core processor.

Overall, benchmark testing was good, and performance results have been consistent since the device was originally tested at its launch. In the case of JavaScript benchmark testing against other versions of the same browser, the San Diego’s performance is nothing short of amazing. Its SunSpider score was better than the Galaxy S III’s! There is no doubt that Intel lives up to its promise of delivering an exceptional web browser.

Battery life didn't hold up to Intel’s promise of 14 days' in standby mode. It’s primarily due to the juice drained by powering the screen. The San Diego was tested with a video loop with the screen at 50 percent brightness. The phone ran out of power around seven hours and 20 minutes. That’s a result pretty much on par with other Android devices, but not bad for a 4-inch smartphone.

Day-to-day use was a lot better than many other of the latest smartphones. The battery lasted two to three days between charges. Not using the smartphone features at all gave the battery a two-week lifespan between charges.

To sum it all up:

Overall, Intel's first Android smartphone performed admirably.

The real stand-out was its Medfield processor that met and, in some cases, exceeded expectations.

The battery didn’t live up to Intel’s claims but still held its power very well.

The camera was a big disappointment. Back to the drawing board Intel.

When compared to Samsung and HTC devices the San Diego looks cheap and somewhat fragile.

It needs Ice Cream Sandwich sooner rather than later.

Priced at $308 USD, the San Diego joins a nice variety of inexpensive entry-level smartphones in the Orange family.

Verizon Wireless is the first major U.S. carrier to announce details on a data sharing plan. Verizon is calling theirs “Share Everything Plans”, which package shared voice minutes, text messages and data. Smartphones, tablets and feature phones are all eligible devices.

Share Everything Plans include unlimited minutes, unlimited texting, video and picture messaging, and a data allowance for up to 10 Verizon Wireless devices. In addition, the Mobile Hotspot service for all wireless devices is included.

Costs start at $30 per device for basic cell phones and $40 per device for smartphones. 1GB of shared data will run $50 per month and include unlimited voice calling and text messaging.

For $100 plus the monthly fees for each device, up to 10GB of data per month can be shared between devices. Unlimited voice and SMS are included.

“Customers asked, and today Verizon Wireless delivered an industry first,” said Tami Erwin, vice president and chief marketing officer at Verizon Wireless. “Share Everything Plans are the new standard for wireless service.” Verizon Wireless’s Share Everything plans become available on June 28th. Both existing and new customers are eligible.

The business networking website LinkedIn has confirmed reports that some of its users’ passwords have been stolen and leaked on the Internet. According to Finnish security firm CERT-FI, a forum member in Russia has claimed responsibility for stealing 6.46 million encrypted LinkedIn passwords and posting them online. In fact, with the quad processing power provided by today top brand cell phones and tablets like the:

could have easily been used by the hacker to perpetrate the cybercrime.

It is recommended that all LinkedIn users change their passwords as a precautionary measure. If you use that same passwords on other sites (as most people do), you should change it on those sites as well.

We want to provide you with an update on this morning’s reports of stolen passwords. We can confirm that some of the passwords that were compromised correspond to LinkedIn accounts. We are continuing to investigate this situation and here is what we are pursuing as far as next steps for the compromised accounts:

Members that have accounts associated with the compromised passwords will notice that their LinkedIn account password is no longer valid.

These members will also receive an email from LinkedIn with instructions on how to reset their passwords. There will not be any links in this email. Once you follow this step and request password assistance, then you will receive an email from LinkedIn with a password reset link.

These affected members will receive a second email from our Customer Support team providing a bit more context on this situation and why they are being asked to change their passwords.

It is worth noting that the affected members who update their passwords and members whose passwords have not been compromised benefit from the enhanced security we just recently put in place, which includes hashing and salting of our current password databases.

Rumors of the death of the “tablet” have been highly exaggerated. There were those who predicted smartphone-tablet hybrids like the Samsung Galaxy Note wouldn’t find a market. Then Samsung goes and sells 5 million of them in less than five months. Well on their way to meeting there 10 million unit goal for 2012, it’s a good thing Samsung didn’t listen to the naysayers.

According to a new report from market research firm ABI, Samsung’s Galaxy Note has started a new trend. As ABI analyst Joshua Flood put it, “One of the chief drivers for tablets is the amount of time people use their smartphones for web browsing, reading articles and newspapers on the go, or simply navigating their journeys. The larger screen sizes make a significant difference to the user’s experience when compared to conventional-sized touchscreens between 3.5 to 4 inches.” ABI predicts shipments of the devices will increase by a factor of 10 this year over last year.

Sales of tablets like Galaxy Note and LG’s Optimus Vu are expected to surpass 208 million in 2015. ABI describes the trend as “the dawn of the tablet era”. HTC, LG and Huawei are all expected to release their own devices later this year.

Friends of WikiLeaks (FoWL), an encrypted social network for like-minded individuals, has just been launched by backers of the whistle-blowing organization WikiLeaks.

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As described on the WikiLeak home page, “Friends of WikiLeaks is a network of people from across the globe who defend WikiLeaks, its people, its alleged sources and its mission. We publicly and privately promote WikiLeaks and individuals and organisations aligned with the mission of WikiLeaks. This site will help you to join with people like you in your area and across the world. You will make new friends and new allies, care for treasured values and fight in common cause.”

Through FoWL, WikiLeaks plans on having an active role in the creation of online friendships. Instead of having users find people to friend, FoWL will assign users 12 friends each - six from a similar geographic location and six others from other parts of the world who speak the same language.

If users join and are inactive, their fellow group members will be able to boot them out of the group and be automatically assigned a new “friend”.

The latest Apple buzz indicates that the next-generation iPhone will feature an upgraded high-definition 3.95-inch Retina display. Apparently Apple is still testing several new iPhone models, but at least one of the samples includes an upgraded 640 x 1,136-pixel Retina display that measures 3.95 inches diagonally. The current iPhone 4S has a 960x640 resolution and 3.5-inch screen.

With an aspect ratio of close to 16:9, the new Retina display is said to be the same width as the current model only taller. Apple is apparently considering adding a fifth row of icons to the home screen in a version of iOS 6. This would probably be exclusive to the new iPhone since it will be the only one with a larger display.

This news contradicts last week’s reports from both The Wall Street Journal and Reuters, which stated that Apple had already placed orders for the new iPhone model with its new display panel suppliers. Panel orders could not yet have been placed if Apple is still testing display sizes.

Sprint’s HTC EVO 4G LTE smartphones have been sprung from U.S. Customs. Sprint announced it will immediately begin shipping HTC EVO 4G LTE pre-orders to customers who placed their orders through the Sprint website. Sprint announced in a forum post this week that the phones should be in these customers’ hands on or around May 24th.

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According to Sprint, the EVO 4G LTE was originally slated to be released on May 18, but was delayed in U.S. customs due to a “review of shipments that is required after an ITC exclusion order.”

The exclusion order resulted from a court ruling handed down last year. HTC was accused of violating 10 patents held by Apple. The judge ruled in favor of Apple in the case, and required HTC to make changes to the software in its EVO 4G LTE and HTC One X devices that were headed to the U.S. (HTC’s violation specifically involved the process of tapping a phone number in an email to launch the phone’s dialer to call a number.)

The exclusion order went into effect on April 19. U.S. Customs finally pulled both the HTC One X and EVO 4G LTE for inspection last week. HTC had acknowledged the review, and issued a statement reading in part, “We believe we are in compliance with the ruling and HTC is working closely with customs to secure approval.” Approval apparently has been granted, at least for the EVO 4G LTE device. No word on the status of the HTC One X, but we’ll keep you posted.

Customers will be sent a shipping confirmation email with a tracking number as soon as their devices ship. Check the status of pre-orders on Sprint’s website.

HTC and Sprint aren’t saying when EVO 4G LTE devices will be available in retail stores. Those who snapped up pre-order deals from Amazon or Best Buy will most likely have to wait a few extra days before their handsets are delivered, too.

After years of eating away at Microsoft’s Internet Explorer market share, Google Chrome took what looks to be a sustainable lead as the most popular Web browser in the world. According to the latest figures from StatCounter, Chrome has a 32.76% of the market versus 31.94% for Internet Explorer and surpasses Internet Explorer in the global numbers for the first time.

More and more cell phone and tablet users are turning the performance rich chrome as their browser of choice on their devices.

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Just a year ago, Internet Explorer was leading the Web browser market share with 43%, followed by Mozilla Firefox with 29%. Chrome came in a distant third with 19%. Twelve months later, IE is down 12% while Chrome gained 13% (due to both IE and Firefox losses). Firefox also lost about 4% of its users and now has just over 25% market share.

"Whether Chrome can take the lead in the browser wars in the long term remains to be seen, however the trend towards Chrome usage at weekends is undeniable. At weekends, when people are free to choose what browser to use, many of them are selecting Chrome in preference to IE," added Aodhan Cullen, commenting on the weekend surges in Chrome usage.